By Staff Reporter
People carry flags and signs demanding release of Aafia Siddiqui
People carry flags and signs demanding release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, who was sentenced to 86 years in prison by a US judge in September 2010 after she was convicted of shooting at FBI agents and soldiers following her arrest in Afghanistan, during a protest march in Karachi, Pakistan October 8, 2021 [Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]
We have recently – imam and lawyer – joined forces, along with so many unsung heroes, to demand respect for the humanity of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. She is often called the “Most Oppressed Muslim Woman in the World” – and with good cause. There is no other woman who went through the full US Rendition to Torture program. There is no other example of a case where a woman was abducted by the CIA and their Pakistani co-conspirators along with her three small children.
And is there a parent in the world who does not tremble at the fate that befell those kids? Suleman, aged 6 months, was apparently killed when he was dropped on his head during the abduction. The CIA has never let Aafia know, but this happened on March 30, 2003, in Karachi, so it seems unlikely that the child is still alive. Yet which fate would be worse for the mother – to know the infant who was so recently a part of your body is dead? Or to hold out a faint hope two decades later that he lives?
It might seem obvious that Suleman did die once you hear what our government – the US – did to the other two. Mariam, aged 3, was taken all the way to Afghanistan, a war zone, where her name was changed to Fatima and she was involuntarily put in a family of white Christian Americans for seven years. She would still be there but for former President Hamid Karzai, who later helped get her home.
Then there is Ahmed, who was taken to Kabul and put in prison, at the age of six! He was told his name henceforth was to be Ihsan Ali and that he would be killed if he said it was anything else. Ahmed and Mariam are both US citizens, and it is mind-boggling that the CIA, sworn to uphold the US Constitution, would do this to two children from anywhere, let alone kids carrying US passports.
Aafia was herself taken to Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan where she endured five years of torture. Eventually, through an agonizing path, she ended up in FMC Carswell, a federal women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, serving what is essentially a life sentence.
This article is not the forum in which to contest her guilt – whatever our well-founded doubts – so let us pretend she really did try to kill an American soldier, even though she was the only person to be shot. Regardless, it is a common thread in most faiths that we should remember those in distress, and that’s part of what brings the two of us together in this struggle for Aafia. In the Quran we are told, “And they give food from their sustenance, in spite of their love for it, to the needy, the orphan, and the captive…” (Insaan “The Human” 76:8). The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) famously taught that “no one of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself” (Bukhari). In the Bible, a verse reads that we should “continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering”. (Hebrews 13:3)
